The incredible shrinking Obama

The once-muscular presidency of Barack Obama has undergone a dramatic downsizing – in power, popularity, prestige and ambition – to the point where even Obama die-hards are starting to question his ability to right the economy or win reelection.

Three polls in a single day Tuesday all told the same sorry tale – the avatar of hope and change, the slayer of Osama bin Laden, the president with dreams of a billion-dollar reelection campaign - is losing popular support and bleeding political power fifteen months ahead of Election Day.

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“He has sort of lost the sense of power and mystique of the presidency,” says longtime Obama ally Andy Stern, former president of the powerful Service Employees International Union. “There’s also a sense that people aren’t scared of him. That’s very dangerous.”

That makes Thursday’s high-stakes jobs speech before a joint session of Congress all the more critical for the White House. It’s not only Obama’s last chance to take a big, bold stroke at spurring employment, it might be his final opportunity to reassert the dominance he lost last November to congressional Republicans, who seem united on nothing other than the desire see him fail.

It hasn’t been pretty. Last week, hours after Obama acceded to Republican demands he move his speech to a joint session of Congress on jobs from Wednesday to Thursday, his press secretary felt compelled to reassure Americans that no, the speech wouldn’t preempt the NFL’s Packers-Saints season opener.

The speech will now start at the un-presidential hour of 7 p.m., just to make sure no one misses a single pulled hamstring.

“If the address is done by kickoff,” joked one veteran reporter in the White House briefing room on Thursday, “does that mean he sees the speech as the pregame show?”

To Obama, this speech is anything but a joke. Obama’s advisers, wary of leaks and preemptive attacks, haven’t been sharing details of the proposals he will make with members of Congress in either party. But sources tell POLITICO he is considering some new approaches, including the possibility of drafting his proposals as an actual bill, something he hasn’t done much in the past.

And the White House seems genuinely eager for fresh ideas, with aides laying out the framework of his speech to columnists on Tuesday in the Roosevelt Room, and then to a gathering of top Democratic strategists that included former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, former Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart, super-lobbyist and former Dick Gephardt aide Steve Elmendorf and Porter Novelli executive Kiki McLean.

The jobs speech is expected to outline proposals worth at least $200 billion and will be filled with action items, from new infrastructure projects, to the extension of the payroll tax credits — and possibly, according to one senior congressional source, an attempt to provide additional local funding for teachers at a time when they are being laid off by the thousands.

But to critics and allies alike, the fact that the president of the United States has to tiptoe around Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees for the privilege of delivering a plan for putting Americans back to work is a measure of just how far he’s been humbled by an unforgiving economy, unyielding GOP and an unnerved, underemployed nation.

“He’s allowed the Congress to manhandle him, said one top Democratic ally of Obama’s. “Every time he’s put his foot down they’ve kicked him in the shin. It’s goddamn embarrassing. He’s losing power. He needs to grab it back.”

For some, Obama’s slide has brought to mind the infamous 1992 Time cover on “The Incredible Shrinking President” that described the political death spiral of President George H. W. Bush, who went from a 80-plus approval rating in the aftermath of the first Gulf War to the private sector a year later.